Not Tonight
by elle.writes
Summary: Levi contemplates his relationship with Eren on the eve of the 57th Expedition Beyond the Walls. Levi x Eren, extended warnings at top.


**Pairings/Warnings:** Levi x Eren, mentioned Levi x Erwin and Levi x Hanji, m/m sex, light cursing, angst

**Notes:** Didn't really want smut to be my first contribution to this fandom but… *sigh* This thing kinda just wrote itself so oh well, too late now! Don't think there are any real show spoilers but this takes place the night before episode 17.

Big thank you to Miss Murdered for beta'ing out of her fandom! And as always, I do not own these characters or the show Shingeki no Titan.

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Eren is very... enthusiastic. Eager. It is different with him. Or maybe I am different now – older, jaded – but I haven't felt like this since... probably since my first few times, honestly, since I was fifteen and young like him and stupid like him. When I was still passionate like him and didn't try to temper it with hard reality.

Not that I don't respect that passion, that I don't admire it or find it attractive or even understand it. Despite what people choose to believe about me I am equally as passionate – I have just learned to practice a certain amount of self-control that he lacks due to inexperience and age. Not that I'm complaining, exactly, though in the field it may be problematic and lead to uncertainty, outside of military formations and rigor it isn't... unpleasant.

Really I just worry about him, that he's not thinking this through, what this means now, what's between us. The names of the men and women I've seen killed in action will always haunt me and many of them were my partners, were people I fucked around with, and yes, I know one of them will be Eren – perhaps even at my hands if he loses control – because statistics dictate that. And I'm prepared for that eventually, I maintain that distance and yet I don't think he does. He has seen hell, looked it in the eyes at a very early age, but he's too young and emotionally immature to really know how to manage that.

I know this as he reaches for me, clinging to my shirt – fear, anxiety washing off of him as he twists it and pulls me back into him. Not reluctantly I allow this, allow his shaking arms to hold me, allow his teeth in my neck, biting into sensitive flesh and selfishly I let myself enjoy it. My attraction to him was nothing I had ever intended to act upon. He is young, a child, my charge but I had underestimated him, his admiration, what I would mean to him and I...

Fuck. Selfish doesn't even begin to describe what I am as I allow him to trail his tongue to my ear. God only knew if he was even attracted to me, Levi, the human being, the person I am or if he's just fucking with a legend, a hope, some perverse construct of his mind wherein I am a savior – the only one who can help him achieve his goals.

A small part of me hates myself but it is overridden by the part of me that wants to feel like this again, a way I haven't felt in years, a way I never thought I could feel again until him. I turn in his arms, slam him back against the wall and he slides down just enough that I can move my thigh between his legs and kiss him hard on the mouth. He isn't shy, isn't passive, and he kisses me back like something possessed, all fingers in my hair, tongue thrusting in my mouth, and it's like he feels the way that I feel.

Maybe that is it. My body burns as it presses into his and I want him. I can feel my dick straining against my pants, can feel him as he moves desperately against my thigh and I push forward to lock our hips so that we can grind against one another in some frantic dance that gets us nowhere but it doesn't matter. He wants me. It's not like the others, not like with Erwin, not like with Hanji, not simply wanting a reprieve from the fucked up shit that we've seen, wanting to get lost in a moment of pleasure and fuck if it matters who it's with. No. Whether he sees me as the person I am or not it doesn't matter – he wants me and he is as attracted to me as I am to him.

I think he may have a higher stamina for foreplay than I but he indulges my need to make this quick and even as I grab his ass – pull him forward and press into him so hard it hurts, lave his collarbones in attention with my tongue, with my teeth – he is trying to get his hands between our bodies, trying to loosen the constriction of our clothing. He is panting in my ear as his fingers fumble and I can tell he's getting frustrated and it makes me smirk, though he cannot see it.

"Levi," he says and I hear the strain in his voice and I pause, look up at him with my eyes only, not removing my mouth from his skin and I can see the flush on his face.

It is enough that he has a moment to open our pants and I watch need move across his face in the form of a flutter of lashes and a loose mouth as he touches himself and it makes me want him now. It is only worse when he touches me, giving me a few eager pumps and a stupid fucking grin as I lay my body heavily against his. I hate and I love that grin.

I run my hands up his shirt in retaliation and feel how hot his body is – hot with want, hot with anticipation – and with my cheek pressed between his collarbones, my head tucked into his neck, I feel his breath catch in his chest as my fingers find his nipples. I have never personally derived any pleasure from this kind of play but the way his body twitches and jerks makes me harder than I have any right to be. His hips are rocking against mine again and I can feel his erection moving against mine and even I am not able to contain a hiss of pleasure – but it is then he knows he has me.

He slides from underneath me to his knees and nuzzles his face between my legs. I do not understand this strange affection but his tongue darts out to tease my balls and I don't argue it either. Instead I brace myself against the wall as he takes me in his mouth and I groan, allowing myself a moment of complete helplessness as my hips buck forward just a little though I try as a courtesy to him to control them.

It is different with Eren. This is not something I would do for someone else – offer this level of vulnerability – but like I said it's different with him. I try not to think about the fact that I am his first but his technique is sloppy and frustratingly ineffectual and though his enthusiasm more than makes up for that it leaves me faced with the undeniable reality that I am. And I do not deserve to be anybody's first just as I do not deserve to be anybody's last.

I wonder sometimes if that was his motivation when he reached out to me. Maybe he'd heard the rumors of my promiscuity though it certainly wasn't his business to assume but regardless. Maybe that was what spurred him on that first night when he grabbed my hand before I left and all I had to do was look and I knew what he wanted. It was written all over his face. And though I know he wants me I still can't deny that it lingers in the back of my mind that maybe he was emboldened by the realization that he could die having never had sex.

My thoughts disturb me so I thread my fingers through his hair and halt his head. I look down at him as he looks up, letting my dick slide from his lips in anticipation of being criticized, and I see his own hand slacken from where he has been touching himself and it is too much – the look on his face, the innocent way he is asking me what's wrong, why did I stop him – and I look away to the bed. He takes it as the signal it wasn't.

There isn't much else in his basement level room besides the bed, a few stacks of folded clothes, and his harnesses but then he is afforded no privacy – the irony being that we have all the privacy in the world down here. He kicks out of his pants as he makes his way to the bed, digging the little tube of oil out from underneath the mattress, and he smiles at me. It was that kind of thing – it makes me swallow subconsciously, makes me lick my lips and makes my heart beat faster and I didn't like it. It makes me uncomfortable that I feel this way with him and I want to tell him not to, that no one else would smile at me like that even given what we were about to do but then I can never make my voice form the words because a part of me obviously wants that smile. Maybe even needs it.

He lies down before me and I go down on him. My technique is far superior to his but then I use that to my advantage and tease him instead as I prep him with my fingers, feeling his body constrict and writhe beneath me. His hands are in my hair and he pulls too hard but I like it like that. He is more mindful not to thrust his hips but I find my own move in rhythm with the motion of my fingers, needing the friction, needing some sympathetic action as my body knows that within mere moments I would be buried deep within him.

I hear him whimper as I withdraw my fingers and wipe them on the sheets and I stare down at him – his body young and supple but less defined than I am used to, the planes softer and the curves gentler and I enjoy that about him. I enjoy his youth. I enjoy his optimism and his drive. I enjoy the way he looks up at me expectantly, the way he waits and follows my lead, the way he makes me feel when I am inside him – like I can still feel. Like I can share his optimism, like I can be happy, maybe, even though I know that "happiness" is far beyond my ability to ever obtain at this point in my life.

But still I kiss him as I slide in slowly, being careful with him the way I always am, but only for him, letting him adjust and feeling his body react to my entrance as he rolls his hips and pants into my mouth. He is eager for me – as eager as I am for him – and though I am only halfway I withdraw my hips a little as a tease and he whines. Hearing his frustration, his desire, his need causes a fire to build in my gut and though I want to take him hard and fast the way I might with someone else, I find more fulfillment in continuing to tease him.

I see frustration mounting in his eyes as his hands fist in my sweaty shirt and I am moving in and out of him in short thrusts that have the head of my dick just barely brushing his prostate and he is grinding his teeth against the onslaught of sensation. And then it was my turn to smile at him. I think it makes him mad, maybe, my condescending grin, because he locks his legs around my hips and tries to force me deeper. I don't let him overpower me, but I do chuckle as I give him what he wants, though my laughter is overwhelmed by the sound of his moan, low and deep, as I am fully seated in him.

With firm hands I lift his hips to make my thrusts easier on both of us and he grips the sheets in his own, twisting them, and I wonder how vocal he would be if he were completely uninhibited. I don't know why but as I look down at him, listen to the sounds of pleasure he is trying so hard not to make, I think of a time when it wouldn't have to be this way. But if it weren't this way then this wouldn't be happening – he certainly wouldn't be with me – and the thought makes my throat uncomfortably tight.

"Levi," he groans and his big eyes open to look up at me and I pause, stare straight into him, open and exposed – too honest, too accessible – and I have to look away.

His fingers find the back of my neck, stroke through the short and sweaty hair there and I reach up to stop him, twinning our fingers together. I move our hands to his cock, stroking it as I resume my movement, trying to lose myself in his body again but it is difficult, now. Honestly, this whole moment between was difficult, not as it usually was, not fast and hard the way I'd come to expect. And I couldn't make myself change it either.

Maybe it was just tomorrow, the guilt of putting him in that position, this innocent stupid fucking kid with too big eyes and a power beyond his ability to control but I knew him intimately now. For all my talk of distance I had failed. There was something about him that touched something about me and I – I felt differently with him and I can't deny that any more than I could pretend I didn't feel anything at all for him.

He closes his eyes and tilts back his head, biting his lip and I know he is close. I can feel his hips rocking and I thrust faster, anxious to see his face washed in pleasure – to know that despite what may happen tomorrow, I was able to give him a moment of bliss. I didn't deserve to be his first and I damn well didn't deserve to be his last but if I had to be, I could at least hope I was worth it.

When he comes, he releases a breathy moan that makes my stomach clench. His eyelashes flutter, his body tenses around me, the friction increasing to nearly unbearable levels, and cum smatters on his abs and shirt and I get off on it. I can't control it any more. I lose myself in him.

It is only a few more thrusts with the afterimage of his pleasure burned into my retinas, layered over his body currently flushed and heaving underneath my own and I join him, spinning, falling, crashing and it's like nothing else, like no one else. I wonder briefly as I place a light kiss on his knee, loath to pull out, if it would ever be like this again and I know – he may have started this, but I shouldn't have continued it.

I force myself to leave him then, to stand and refasten my pants, to create some much needed distance and act like this meant just as little to me as it should. I hear him moving behind me, taking off his shirt and wiping off his stomach. I hear him sigh, can feel his eyes boring into my back and I know I have to escape.

"Levi," he says as I take a step forward and I pause, look over my shoulder at him. The nervousness was back, the anxiety, and I couldn't just leave him but I couldn't say why not. "The plan..."

"Is a good plan," I reply impassively. "This is a military operation. We will lose men. It is to be expected. But it is the best plan we have and it has a high chance of success."

I watch him swallow and nod his head slightly, clearly not that alleviated by my words but he has to learn to find his own confidence. Otherwise... Too much was riding on his strength.

"Levi," he called again as I started forward and I didn't look back this time, didn't want to see him sitting there, seeming altogether too small while naked on that bed. "Would you stay... tonight...?"

Inwardly I cringe. I spend so much time making myself forget how much confidence he truly has – after all, he approached me initially, I should have expected this. But this is the one thing I was trying to avoid and I thought he knew that, thought he understood that if we let that happen we would be too close and worse – in that moment the illusion I was able to maintain that he was mature enough to keep this from becoming personal for him was shattered. I had to face the consequences of my actions, of fucking around with a damned kid, of meaning something to somebody.

"No." The singular word seemed to echo through the room with my footfalls as I started forward once more. The room felt claustrophobic and I had to escape. This was perhaps the worst I had ever fucked up and I didn't want to face the consequences of my selfishness and stupidity.

But once I had shut the door behind me I felt stuck, unable to continue, and I turned back to it, resting my head against it lightly, feeling remarkably stupid and more than a little cruel. Eren never complained, never asked for anything he didn't need, and he was down here, alone, forced to bear his burden single-handedly out of fear and I left him there willingly, night after night. Was it right to deny him this, this one thing he asked of me, when I was one of the only ones who did not fear him? The only one who might stay?

After I used him so?

And not only physically, not only sex. Tomorrow he would be bait. That was his role in our society now and no one could understand that fear. I couldn't and yet... and yet as I stood there with my forehead pressed against the wood and listened to him softly crying, I did fear. I feared losing him. I feared that this was the last time we would be together and I had only shown him distance. It had been a long time since I had felt fear and I hated the reminder, the nagging in my gut, curling its way up through my heart and my hand touched the door knob once more.

Walking back into the room I watch as he quickly wipes his eyes on the backs of his hands and sits up straighter, clearly trying to make it appear as though he hadn't been crying but I knew. And I didn't say anything as I stripped out of my shirt, let it fall to the floor as I crossed the path back to his bed. This was beyond stupid, it was wrong and reckless and it would create nothing but unacceptable emotional attachment but I just couldn't let him spend tonight scared and alone. Not tonight.

Thankfully, he doesn't say anything, just follows me with his eyes, but I catch the little smile on his face, the upturn of his lips that he tries to control but can't and I don't want that – the warm feeling it gives me that he is so glad of my return. He throws back the sheets and slides underneath them, lying on his side, and I slide in behind him. The sheets and his body still smell like sweat and sex but for whatever reason it is comforting, even to me, and I move so that my torso is flush against his back, throwing one arm casually over his waist.

There is a moment between us where we make minute adjustments, attempting to get comfortable and I realize it has been a long, long time since I had done this and really, it isn't… unpleasant. I feel him sigh with contentment, feel the heat of his body and feel him relax in my arms. I lay my lips against his back and close my eyes, breathe in the scent of his sweat and his skin.

"You don't have to be afraid," I murmur against his flesh and I hate myself for it. I didn't say it for him, to comfort him or make him feel better – I said it for me, a promise to him that I know I can't keep. And his fingertips reached out for mine in return, met them and squeezed my hand a little.

"I know," he says and I wish that he hadn't.


End file.
